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integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale-ups online in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com slash setup How far did you go with transitioning? Did you go all the way? I went all the way. I was so dissociated and so f***ed up that I didn't even comprehend the utter, total brutality I'd inflicted upon my own form.
It was brutal. It's nothing short of surgical self-harm, really. Is it a vagina? Of course it's not a vagina. I think that this is... fundamentally an attack on truth. It's not about the plight of gender-confused people. I had a very difficult childhood, severe neglect. My father was struggling with his own sexuality and gender. He would talk to me in strange ways, inappropriate ways about women's bodies.
I see it, I think, in older men that transition. Disturbing kind of flaunting of it. You've said that you wanted to put on your mother. Oh, totally. Do you think that doctors should be a little warier? The amount of young men. And ridiculous that they would even be considered for transition. When did you first feel that you might want to be a girl? I don't know whether I felt that I wanted to be a girl. I just didn't want to be a boy. And that sort of began...
Three, four years old, mimicking the opposite sex. And I grew up in a really small village in the south of England and had a very difficult childhood. So I was very, very kind of, I felt unsafe around boys. And so in a small village, the...
the girls were a safer place. And it's quite funny, actually, because I remember playing with the girls in the village and they would all be gathering around me in gleeful play, dressing me up. And when I transitioned in my late twenties, I used to go into Space NK.
people that watch this who live in London when they spray St K. So it's a posh makeup shop, basically. And I used to get my makeup there. And the female sales assistants used to do the same thing. They'd all gather around and gleefully sort of like put, help me with the makeup. And I just, I said to a friend the other day, what? why do you do that? Why do girls do that? But it just feels like a safe place, really, for a traumatised little boy. Yeah, well, that's the next thing, because...
Having watched your show, it's a brilliant YouTube channel that you have linked below. You weren't washing or cleaning. You were in a strange state, a strange place. Yeah, I had an extremely difficult childhood. I was born into a very complicated situation. This has made my whole inquiry into the nature of my own identity and my own motivation to transition very, very difficult to decipher.
My father was struggling with his own sexuality and gender from before I was even born. And he told me when I was a kid he wanted to leave my mother, which is stupid. Can I swear? Not the C word. Oh no, I wouldn't use the C word, but I'm probably going to swear a little bit. Which is a fucking stupid thing to say to a kid anyway. But yeah, he told me that when I was young and he was going to leave my mother before I was born.
And over the years, my mother and I have talked about what happened throughout my childhood. And what we think happened was that he felt trapped. And he then came out to my mother shortly after I was born. He was going to leave. I came along, he stayed, felt trapped, came out to my mother and said that he wanted to be a woman. She said, no, uh, you're not making that a part of our relationship. And then they then sort of, she basically had a breakdown and, uh,
They both led double lives, seeking their own sort of happiness elsewhere outside the marriage. And there's me as a little boy, as a baby really, born into severe neglect and very complicated adult issues. that I tried to make sense of. My mother was seeking solace with other relationships and drinking. My father was withdrawing. Very, very troubled man, very troubled man.
So I had a very difficult childhood, severe neglect. How far did your father go with transitioning? Well, this has been something that I've deciphered over the last 10 years of... pretty intense therapy as i kind of questioned my own motivations um he was transitioning all the way through my childhood and he moved out when i was nine but but i
you know, as I've been going through the therapeutic process, I've clarified things that I saw and mimicked in him. So he had pierced ears and he had to grow his hair long. He shaved his legs and I saw all these things. And because I was so neglected, I wanted him to see me and I was studying him all the time. And I noticed all these things. I found a box of women's clothes in his garage and he would talk to me in strange ways, inappropriate ways about women's bodies. And it was like...
You know, we see it, I think, in older men that transition. There's a kind of very, very dark sort of disturbing kind of flaunting of it. I see that anyway, and I think he did that a little bit. Is he straight? I don't know. I don't really know much about him. I've only seen him a handful of times in 30 years, but I think he was straight. I don't know.
I don't know. Interesting. And what about you? Tell me, how far did you go with transitioning? I went all the way. I mean, I was dressing as a girl when I was like three or four years old. and really feel feeling comfortable still and even now all my best friends are women or most of my friends are women i'm very very comfortable in the company of women and i feel around men i struggle a little bit because i've had such a difficult childhood and
the abuse I experienced and the difficulty in relationships always with men. Tell me about the actual process of that then. So you must have been, I imagine... 18. Do you have to be 18 to get the- No, well, yeah, I was- The bottom surgery. Yeah, no, I had bottom surgery quite late. I started to transition in my mid-20s, started tinkering.
I started hormones and antiandrogens around 27. And then pretty quickly, I was all in, started having surgery, more major surgery. And then I had the final surgery in my early 30s. How did you feel? Do you remember waking up? Because that's such an incredible thing for anyone to even think of, I suppose.
In modern society, I suppose since hundreds of years ago, there were the castrated eunuchs and the choir boys, they had to have that done. But nowadays, having that done, it shocks people. So when you woke up from that, do you remember that feeling? Relief. Really? Just total relief. I mean, the thing is, though, because I'd had such an awful time as a kid, and I was...
I was dissociated because I was in a lot of pain. I experienced severe injuries. I was in and out of hospital. And later on when I was transitioning, I spent so many times, so many hospital visits. It was so familiar to me. It was like a place of comfort and care because it reflected what I went through as a kid. So I was sort of dissociated from my body because I was so traumatized.
So my body was always just, that's why I was so unclean as a kid, because I didn't want to clean myself because my body didn't feel like me. I was horrified by being in this, this traumatized abused little kid's body. And so later on in life. Well, I went through the transition and it was like I was cleaning myself because a lot of the trauma was focused on me being a boy. So to cleanse myself of that shame of being a boy.
being same-sex attracted when I was little, and early homosexual experiences I was really ashamed of. And so to cleanse myself of that feeling of being corrupt and dirty as a boy. Just felt incredible. And so I remember after the surgery, you're allowed to stand up after about five days. All the tubes come out and all the packing comes out. I didn't feel anything really but relief.
I was so dissociated and so fucked up that I didn't even comprehend the utter total brutality I'd inflicted upon my own form. It was brutal. It's nothing short of surgical self-harm, really. I mean, it's like, it's not... you know we dress it up now we live in a time where these these horrifying brutal surgeries are dressed up as self-expression it's self-harm dressed up as self-expression it's it's nothing short of of brutality you know
And now we have surgeries where you can have part of your colon or lower intestine used to line the pseudo vagina because it creates a mucus. How is that even something that people would consider to be... That is disgusting. Well, exactly. So how is that something that even people would consider to be something rational? How is that rational? I get the impression from how you explain it that there wasn't much excitement about the idea of having a vagina. It was more about not having- Freedom.
freedom from being a boy and hiding in the refuge of being a woman. It answered all these questions I had about my sexuality and the fear I had of men and this feeling of- being distorted as a child. And I couldn't make sense of myself as a male at all. Just couldn't make sense of myself. Couldn't make sense of the things that had happened to me. Couldn't make sense of the abuse and the self-blame and the shame.
And to transform into something that felt more acceptable gave me permission to be a closer expression to who I am as a male, which is very sensitive. it just felt more in alignment with being female and wearing the disguise of being a woman. And when I was young, it was very successful as a disguise, gave me permission from other people to be who I was. You know, the men that I was so terrified of when I was younger.
Now I'd inverted that relationship with men, and they cared for me, they desired me. And that felt like I had some sort of sense of personal power for the first time in my life. It was very, very intense. And that's why I remained engaged with the whole thing for so many years. Do you wish that doctors had maybe considered that you might be going through some sort of trauma at the time?
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, really, because it was self-directed. Nobody enabled me, but they didn't push back. It was all my choice. And so I have really mixed feelings about the whole thing, because in a way, I would have avoided a lot of trauma, a lot of difficulty, if I'd just done it sooner.
I wanted to do it when I was a kid. I knew you could do it when I was about seven or eight, and I fantasized about leaving home and coming back when I was 16 and presenting myself and saying, here I am. Am I acceptable now? Can you see me now? But when my father, my mother outed my father when I was about 13, my whole world imploded because I thought, fuck.
I'm no longer an individual. This is no longer my thing. This is no longer me. How can I differentiate myself from my father? If like, where did I get this from? I must have copied him. So you wanted to be a girl before you even knew that you were a dad? Yeah, way before. Way before. Wow. When I was seven, eight years old. And then when my mother outed him, it stole that from me. It stole my identity. It stole everything from me. I fucking hated him.
Because he'd just taken this thing that offered me so much in the form of solace. He took it from me. And I hated him. And then I tried to be a dude from then on. I tried to be a dude and it was a fucking disaster. So in a way, I wish I'd done it sooner and just kind of accepted that this thing was never going to go away and I had to navigate a way through it and make a choice. And that's why transition was so powerful. I made a choice.
I made a choice. You must have seen that your mum wasn't happy with your dad because he wanted to do that. So weren't you concerned about... She never told us. Not until later in life. Sorry. So you weren't concerned that your mum might go, gosh, I've already lost one...
person to this thing, and now you as well. No, because it was such a broken home. Everyone was leading their separate lives. I was just completely isolated. And I was really witnessing my mother's power as well, because she was very desirable as a woman. She was very...
flirtatious. And I thought, okay, that's powerful. My father was just this withdrawn, very dark, troubled figure. And he had a devastating breakdown through my childhood as well. And I saw that. And I remember playing in the garden. I was about eight years old and he walked down to the back garden and just collapsed on the lawn and just sat there rocking backwards and forwards. I just thought, fuck, what is happening? And then, so, of course, my mother represented power. Power.
And I was fascinated by women because I thought these beings of presence, their presence is not isolation. It's not darkness. It's not fragmentation. It's wholeness. What does a woman represent to a little boy? mother, softness, tenderness, gentleness, belonging. And I just wanted that. And you said that you wanted to put on your mother. Oh, totally. It was like, you know, when I was a little boy,
I was so fucking traumatised and so kind of horrified with my existence and what I was as a being, as a body. I used to go to school and I'd wear two pairs of trousers.
three, four, five, six t-shirts, two or three jumpers. I don't know how anybody didn't spot this, but that's what I was doing. And it was like I was trying to make some substance to my being that wasn't shame. And so... I did the same thing when I was layering on my mum's clothes when I was a little boy, like seven, eight years old, just kind of trying to lose myself in...
in that presence and just equating appearance with reality, really. So that's all I did when I transitioned. It's like wearing a disguise and saying, okay, this is somehow now, this is real. What was it like when you first got, just for people who've never, most of us have never had sort of hormones put in us, what is it, oestrogen that gets put into you? How does that get sort of injected or patched or whatever? I mean, when I...
When I first started on, I first started on antiandrogens and they're like a chemical castration. And when I started on that, I knew peace for the first time in my life. That was peace. because I never knew how to integrate testosterone. It's such a powerful hormone, and you see this in women. that want to transition and live as men. The changes are drastic and irreversible. So when you feel the absence of that, there's just a feeling of calm and...
Yeah, it's not like that. I felt like something toxic had been removed from my system. And so I was on anti-androgens for about eight months to a year, and then I started female hormones. And that was when the change began, because I just thought, oh my God.
I can feel for the first time in my life and I just I just could feel everything that I couldn't feel before because testosterone when you're a man you can say right I'm not going to feel this I'm just going to block that out I'm going to focus and when you don't have that focus anymore You just have feeling. And it was overwhelming, really. I've had a female-to-male guest who said that she could no longer cry with the testosterone. Suddenly, with more testosterone, it was harder to cry.
Yeah, yeah. I just found myself... It was difficult. It was difficult for quite a few years because I'd never learned how to feel. I'd never matured emotionally.
That's why I see the whole thing as quite a valuable experience transition, because for 25 years, I gave myself an opportunity to mature, and I think that's why I kind of... detransitioned as a man in my 50s because I felt like, you know, men I think do come into their own in their 50s as a stillness and a kind of an ease when you get older that perhaps you don't have when you're younger.
And so I've always been a man, just a man wearing a disguise. And now that I'm not wearing that disguise anymore, I didn't feel it was appropriate anymore. I feel, you know, I feel more comfortable. just accepting the reality that I'm a man, but I still don't know how I'd feel with testosterone. I did start taking it again, just a small dose, but it just felt so odd.
Yeah, I bet. It's what you're used to now, but would part of you like to have that part of you down there back? No. I mean, I felt... Yeah, I mean, I know that this is an extremely, you know, people will watch this and just think, whoa, this is an intense, tragic, you know, challenging thing to deal with. But, you know, we...
All we can do is do our best to deal with the hand that life deals us. And that's all we can do is just do our best. And I did my best. I made the best decisions I could at the time. You know, in an ideal world, I would have had a nurturing, nourishing childhood and had better examples of how to be a person. And I would have connected to what I was as a male and I wouldn't have gone through this.
It is what it is. I feel comfortable with that choice. And even now, because of the persistent nature of everything I experienced as a child and how that patterns my relationship to self and my understanding of who I was. the, you know, and the focus on me being a boy being so traumatising, I don't really have any regrets about it and I don't, I feel comfortable with what I've done. It does feel strange now because I've only just had my breasts removed.
and the changes i've been through over the last year since i did that my voice has gone deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and the performance that i was giving as a pretend woman is really really diminished and you know, I look at my body now in the mirror and, you know, I've got scars and I look like this strange mix of, you know, what do I look like? You know, it's...
It's strange to deal with, but I still feel okay with it. It feels to me like you're saying that this is your story and most people don't want to change who they are and what their story is. You've worked it out for yourself and things are going okay now. Yeah, I mean, we don't...
I think it's important not to conceive of ourselves as a being as just the latest event in a causal chain of events that make us who we are. You know, we're an unfolding discovery from this point on, and hopefully you don't let... past mistakes or past decisions define who you are, past traumas even. You cannot carry with you into every moment of your life the baggage you've accrued. You have to put it down at some point and just say, here I am. Do you think that...
Doctors should be a little bit more, a little warier. For example, look at Richie Heron's case, for example. Yeah, I know Richie. Yeah, when they regret it immediately, that kind of thing. Do you think doctors need to say, hang on, this is probably trauma or abuse or something's happened here? Well, there's no way. That a person with comorbidities, it's an awful word, but comorbidities, you know. What does that mean for those who don't know?
other psychological issues. I mean, Richie had, he was seriously OCD, and he changed his mind several times as well. And I know Richie, and I was on his, he has an online forum for detransitioners. I think he used to anyway, and I was on that. And the amount of young men, ridiculous. that they would even be considered for transition, who had been hospitalised for mental illness and yet still somehow is considered something separate.
to these other kind of psychological issues they've got. So they say, okay, you've got all these issues, but it doesn't matter. You're sure about this, and this will be treated differently. It's absolutely insane. It's mad, isn't it? It's completely mad. I feel so sorry for him, you know, because it's... Very different because you, I think you had decades...
of feeling quite happy with what happened. But Richie and many others go, gosh, what's happened? It still feels to me that it shouldn't have happened to you. I know you don't... Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I do agree, but I mean... I don't know. I mean, I don't want to keep coming back to the difficulty I had throughout my life, but I'd experienced so much violence and so much distress as a boy.
And as a young man, I wanted to escape. I just wanted to escape. Was there pain when you woke up from that operation? Yeah. They gave me a morphine clicker, you know, a self-administered morphine thing when I was in hospital. I think you're allowed, over the period that they gave it to me, I could have clicked it like 30 times. I clicked it 350 times. So they just put me to sleep for a little bit.
I think I've seen that Simpsons episode. I'm sure Homer's doing that to himself. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it doesn't work. No? No, no, no. Well, because it's just too much or it just stops? No, it's not strong enough. I wonder if it's placebo. I don't know, but it's just not strong enough. I know that much. Oh, God. And what about sort of, because I know Richie, for example, he had all sorts of infections and things going wrong. Do you know what? I don't know whether it was because I...
When I did it, it was a long time ago, and it was an experts-only thing. Now, when Ritchie had it, and over the period, more and more people have had the surgery now. and there are more and more experts, there are way more mistakes. My stitches split, which happened to about one or ten people in the neck of the wound, but I didn't have any problems really. Is it a vagina? What do you mean it's a vagina? Women have a vagina. It's not a vagina. Of course it's not a vagina. It's just a...
It's a hole that's forced into your body and anchored with scar tissue. That's what it is. It doesn't do anything. It's just the whole delusion that you have to participate. If you want to have sex... and I was sexually active. The thing that used to get to me after a while, I just thought that this whole situation is just kind of ridiculous. I'm pretending and the guy who I'm with is
kind of pretending as well, that this is anything other than, you know, just a hole in my body. It doesn't really do anything. It receives, you know, the mail, but it doesn't really- do anything does it just feel like just just thudding kind of yeah rubbing and thudding yeah i mean but the strange thing is i mean this is not to get into kind of like please do
Not to get... You know, the whole... See, the thing is, for me, and I think a lot of people, older people that have done this, the whole thing was it was partly sexual and partly conceptual. So what is the meaning? Why are you doing this? Why do you want to be a woman? And so there is this kind of inhabiting what woman means to a man. what women means to a man is something that, you know, sexually is really important.
So to actually have sex with a guy and actually be able to function in a kind of like a very pseudo feminine way, it felt very rewarding, very fulfilling because, you know, that's what I wanted to be. But it was just... It wasn't real. Also, didn't your sexual drive, once you had the bottom surgery, didn't it lower? Drastically. Yeah, drastically. But that's why the intimacy of the moment. And that the meaning of it is far more of a focus because it's like, okay.
What does this mean to me? Am I being treated with tenderness and care? And am I functioning in a way that makes more sense to me? Yeah. Yeah. Because I think some people, and it doesn't seem to be the case for you, but correct me if I'm wrong, there's that AGP aspect of wanting to sort of sexually being attracted by the idea of oneself as a woman.
And then they wake up after the bottom surgery and they no longer have that drive because the very thing they wanted to have removed has stopped them from... It's this horrible irony, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I think we're still working this out. I think sexuality is a huge part of it, a huge part of it.
And I agree with Richie Heron about this as well. I think what we call AGP is kind of the objectification of ourselves as a woman, and there is a sexual component to that. For some people it's extremely strong. Obviously we can see that. For some people, it's not. It's more about meaning. But yeah, I don't know how this would work if you're not really attracted to men either. It would seem to me to be something very isolating.
if you did it and you're not attracted to men because all you what do you have but your own reflection then and your own sort of like i don't know it just seems so for a straight person yeah yeah that if they get their bottom surgery done, and then, but now they don't have to drive anymore, then, yeah, there's, well, I guess they can still be attracted to women.
and hope to go out with women as a trans person. Yeah, okay, but that's a problem. We see that that's kind of a problem. Limit who you can see. Gosh. But it is, it's strange though, you know, because I still sort of like, sometimes meet a guy that I feel an attraction to. And I just, since I've detransitioned.
I've had to alter my behaviour because I was quite tactile when I was pretending to be a woman and I would touch. Even though quite often you're not perceived as a woman, you're perceived as not a man, you're woman-like. And so I've had to kind of rein that in a little bit and think, oh shit, I'm not seen that way anymore. But plenty of gay guys who are not trans seem a bit effeminate. Yeah, they do, yeah.
but society seems to not have much of a problem with that yeah but gay guys are attracted to masculinity aren't they they're not attracted to So, you know, straight men are masculine. Which is weird then. So why do they act effeminate? It's a signalling. It's a signalling, isn't it? It's a signalling. It's a signalling of sexuality. They should be extra blokey. There should be a society with blokes. No, but then straight guys aren't attracted to that, are they?
So that's why you mimic femininity, to be attractive to men. But to the wrong men, because gay men want a really manly man. Or should do. No, no, no, no. I think you misunderstand. So if you're attracted to men, you are attracted to masculinity. You're not attracted to feminine gay men, are you?
Yes, that's what I'm saying. So if you want another gay man to be interested in you, you should be extra blokey then. You don't want another gay man to be interested in you, though. You want a masculine man to be interested in you. You want a straight man. See, this again is the irony. It's the horrible irony of that. Yeah, but the thing is... Even when I looked like a woman, the guys I had relationships with were straight. Flexible.
flexible in their sexuality, but they were straight. They were telling themselves they were straight. Maybe, maybe, but they were straight. They were straight. Why would you want to be, if you're attracted to masculinity, you don't want to be with a gay man.
You want to be with a straight man? This is another issue because I think a lot of people consider some of the trans ideology deeply homophobic. It's this idea because a lot of men wouldn't want to be with another man because what society might think, but they say, oh no, but this is a woman. This is a trans woman. I think, you know, it's such a tricky situation because, you know, I was wearing a disguise and that felt like a trick in the end.
I knew, and everybody that I, my peers when I transitioned, nobody, most people didn't say, oh, I'm a woman. We knew what we were. Yeah. It's given you a particular look, though, doesn't it? I mean, I know you said you were androgynous anyway, but you look quite androgynous now. Yeah.
You've got a sort of Professor Brian Cox look. Who? Professor Brian Cox. God, he is really feminine, isn't he? Yeah, I wonder if he sort of detransed or something and hasn't mentioned it. He was in a... He was in a...
Wasn't he in D Ream, a pop band, and he had long hair, looked very feminine. Things can only get better, that's all. Yeah, how wrong we were. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. He looks a bit lesbian-y, I think, in a nice way. I don't mean that, I don't know if that's going to offend people. Are you putting this in? Yeah, I think so, I don't know. Is that going to upset Brian Cox? I'd love to have him on. I'm a big fan of his, I'll just say. So the thing is... Yeah.
When we transition, I speak for everybody. I think I can speak for many people when I say this. When we transition, we're trying to become the real version of ourselves, who we really are. But invariably, we find that to be accepted, we have to perform a little bit. No matter how minimal, if you don't get everything right, voice, mannerisms...
energy, what you're projecting, how you feel, how you feel to other people, you're never, ever going to be accepted. And so, you know, when I did it, it was, passing was really important. And why would you not want to?
you know you want to be accepted you want to just get on with your life you don't want to make a statement about being trans you just want to get on with your life and that's what it was like then but um you know i think in the end for me the facade, the performance, no matter how minimal, just started to feel like a deception.
Do you think for some people it is a bit of a status thing? Nowadays in particular, there's just so many more people wanting to be trans or even without getting the surgery, they want to identify as trans. Do you know what I mean? What does that even mean? What do you mean want to be trans? They want to say that they are trans. Well, I think that's the difference. In my day, it wasn't that long ago, it's only 25 years ago, or 30 years since I was in therapy. It wasn't sort of...
You know, if I could have lived as I was, I would have lived as I was. It wasn't, it was something I resisted. I resisted. I tried to make sense of myself as a male. and to live my life as a male, but I couldn't. That didn't seem to make sense. And so, you know, it was a... I think for most people that I knew and I met in therapy, it was a last resort really. Why would you want to mutilate your body and go through years of surgery and hormones and be a medical patient for life?
Why would you want to go through that? Back then we knew the consequences of surgery, and we knew the consequences of hormones as well. They don't really say this anymore. because the advice has changed. You're at increased risk of thrombosis, heart disease, all sorts of cancers that are oestrogen dependent, kidney problems, liver problems. We knew that, but we still did it.
showed how desperate you were. Yeah, because it was the last resort. It was like, oh fuck, I really need to do this. But does it annoy you at all to see sort of some, maybe the younger generation, not actually even going through with the bottom surgery and things like that, but then wearing trans as some sort of... pride thing i think people make some try and make sense of themselves by referencing cultural narratives we say okay who am i how do i make sense of how i feel as a person
and we look at other people and we look at the permissions we're given by society, we say, okay, there's my tribe, there's my tribe. And it's just a different thing nowadays. But it's strange, you know, I see this in my, underneath my own videos on my channel when I talk about these things, and I talk about detransition, I get younger trans people occasionally in the comments saying, you're a woman, you just can't face it.
Even though I'm saying, look, I spent 25 years as a trans woman, and much as I loved it, much as it made sense of who I am, this now feels more honest. to just say, I'm a different kind of man. That feels more honest. And they say, oh, you're just, you're still a woman. People still call me she in the comments. And it's usually younger, sort of trans identified people. Why do they do that? Why? I don't know.
I don't know. And I'll say, I've come back to the truth of myself as a man, and it feels effortless now. And they say, oh, well, that's how I feel about... being a trans man or a trans woman. So there's nothing you can say to that kind of narrative, that sense-making. There's nothing you can say because that's a belief. Do you find yourself getting in those kind of debates? I don't respond to those comments because there's nothing you can say.
It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I think they would say that we're being bigoted or something now, but I would say that they are by suggesting that what you're saying, I'm a bloke, and they're calling you a woman. Yeah. I mean, I... You know, the reason I agreed to do this interview is because I've only just got to a place where I feel stable enough to even participate in this discussion, you know, because I've gone through such a difficult time to even disentangle.
myself from the idea that I felt held within as a place of safety and comfort as a pretending woman, it took me so long to say, okay, What's true in me? Who am I as a person beneath this disguise? I haven't been able to participate in the conversation until now because I felt so emotionally raw and vulnerable. I just couldn't.
in the conversation is visceral, it feels life or death to those people that are trans identified. So their responses can be extremely angry and spiteful, so I don't really want to participate in it. In a way, you're their worst nightmare. It's a little bit like an apostate. You're an apostate from Islam or one of the religions. I'm a heretic. Yeah, you're a heretic. Exactly. And that's the thing that convinces other minds most, and they know that. And so you're enemy number one. Yep.
I, I, you know, I'm not so sure though. I mean, I think we need to be aware of, uh, everyone's just trying to make sense of themselves, aren't they? And we're making sense of ourselves. within the cultural narrative and the reality that we find ourselves living within. And that reality is not simply a physical reality, it's a reality of ideas and permissions. And so people are just going to try and fit into how that happens.
fit into that narrative and make sense of themselves. Whereas I think that there are an extremely small number of people, an extremely small number of people, that literally feel like they are born in the wrong body. But that's not what we have now. We have an exploration of identity. I see this in the comments under my videos. People say, oh, well, if it doesn't work, I can just change back.
Or, you know, I may do it for a bit and I may change back. It's fine. You know, we're not all like you. You're just a messed up individual that does. Yeah, yeah. And it's almost a trivializing. of what it means to be a being, you know, a thinking, feeling, physical being.
the body is just seen as something we can modify and we can change if we want to. It doesn't work. It doesn't matter. It's just surgery. It's just hormones. And it's just a trivialization of this sacredness of what it means to be A man, a woman, male, female, there's a truth there. It's not something trivial. It's not something that you can just wear or explore. You can explore the feminine within you as a man, and I can explore the feminine within me as a man.
but it doesn't make us a woman. I think it's a trivialisation of what it means to be either male or female to just say, okay, it's just surgery, it's just hormones. And you can't change back, can you? Well, you can't change in the first place. I can't change back. You can't undo, let's say, the damage that's done. I mean, you are now a eunuch and will forever be. Yeah.
No, I mean, you can't change. I wouldn't want to anyway. I wouldn't want to anyway. I'm still finding my feet with, you know, an appearance that makes sense to me. Part of me just wants to shave my head and just kind of... do away with any attachment to appearance because it all seems so trivial now. But no, you can't change back. You can't change back. If you go to public toilets, you've got to always use the... I just used the toilets upstairs and went to the disabled.
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. I still, I mean, I still feel, you know, like I said in the beginning, I still feel very comfortable with women and, you know, all my, nearly all my friends are women. My best friends are all women. And I still feel like an alien in men's spaces. I still struggle around men. Have you ever gone to some of those? Because there are all sorts of men's groups where they're very emotional and open and supportive. No?
They go to the forest and sit around with some fire. Sweat lodges. Well, I don't know. I've heard about these things. They go out into the forest and they all sort of tell one another their deepest secrets and things. It's all very... Do you know what's really funny, actually? Because that was one of the greatest privileges of transition.
was not in the way that privilege is used now, like privilege is some kind of like status. I mean, the privilege as in insight- Joy. Yeah, joy. A profound insight into men, because I could see- Because men were always a puzzle to me. When I was little, men were a complete puzzle to me. And even as a young man, I was completely baffled by how to be a man and I didn't know.
I didn't understand men. And when I transitioned and I was seen as a woman, I saw a different side of men. And that was one of the greatest privileges because I could see tenderness in men and I'd never seen that. I could see tenderness in men confided in me about- you know, their deepest feelings of their own feminine side as well. And because they see you as a safe place, because you're a man.
but you're not threatening. You're a man, but you've gone through something that they perhaps think about, and men are afraid of their femininity. And so I had access to that. And it was quite beautiful at times. I loved that. I find men a puzzle sometimes as well, you know, probably to a far lesser extent than you did. But still, I never felt ashamed of any femininity. No, it all just felt like I don't care. I'll just do whatever I do.
I don't really, I never got it. See, I felt ashamed of being feminine when I was a boy. Really, really ashamed. Because it was the 1970s and it was like, there's nothing... you know, there's nothing, there was no, you know, I don't even think of myself as gay, but I mean, I'm flexible and I, you know, and I.
I've been in love with both men and women, and I've had loving, intimate relationships with both men and women. But when I was young, when I was a young boy, it was, it was the biggest crime, biggest crime to be a feminine boy.
You couldn't be a feminine boy. See, I didn't grow up in that time. So yeah, I don't know. I guess I watch a lot of first dates. Do you watch that, the TV show? I don't have a television. Ah, it's a show where they put like dates together and you watch their first date and it's just... it's something so easy to watch when I'm just like bored on an afternoon eating lunch or whatever I just pop that on but they every episode will probably have like a trans
Because, you know, it's TV and it's, you know. They're trying to disrupt. Yeah, I guess. There's always a trans one, a gay one. There's another story. There's a man who fell off a roof. I don't know. Everyone's got a story. They've all got stories. It's funny how all of those are so...
They're all in the building, all these people. I suppose you've got to be a certain kind of individual to even want to go on and publicly have a first date. So something must have happened in your life to make you go, I think I should talk about this on TV.
There is this sort of narrative among the trans couples that I see. Firstly, there's this thing that has to happen where the trans person, because often it's a trans person and a gay person, the trans person halfway through the dinner will say, listen, I've got to admit something. I'm actually a trans person. And then the other one goes,
Oh, I didn't even notice. You know, it's like, yes, you did. That's what you applied for. You wrote in your thing, I would like a trans person. That's why they put you with one. But secondly... But secondly, there's usually a bit, this narrative of, they'll tell a story like, oh, and I took someone back and I didn't tell them I was trans and then they were horrified. And this is like a moment we're supposed to sympathize with the trans person for not revealing.
No way. I always told. It was quite awkward sometimes. When I was young and I really looked the part, I made a lot of effort. I'm quite tall, so I used to get a lot of attention, and that's what I needed. As a boy that was lacking self-worth, validation, validation, that's what I was looking for, and I got so much attention. And when a guy would come and talk to me,
let him do his thing. And then I'd just say, stop, take a closer look. And if you want to stay, we can continue the conversation. And you'd get three responses. You'd get the guy that would style it out and just go, yeah, I knew.
and stay and have a really awkward conversation and just, and then kind of make excuses, which is always terrible. And I say, you can, you can leave, you know, you can leave as well. I knew I just wanted directions. That's why I was chatting to you. Anyway. I knew, I knew. Yeah, you'd get that. you'd get the person who said, yeah, I know. And that's fine. Or you'd get the person who would go, oh, wow. Oh, tell me more. But, you know, and it's just like, that's...
That whole thing was what made it so, you know, it's a fascinating thing to do. Stepping through the looking glass between the divide between the sectors and you're seeing the world from a completely different perspective. It's fascinating, really. I value the experience. the problems. I do value it. Did you ever think you were a woman? No. I just got tired of the sound of my own voice in therapy, and I just thought, you know, I think this is going to make me happy, so I'm just going to do it.
And it was wild. It was wild. Transition is just incredible. What are your thoughts about the culture wars around trans J.K. Rowling, for example? I don't know. I mean, I think that, you know, I'm not, I'm not culturally savvy in any way at all. I don't, I don't keep abreast of any of this stuff. I don't look at Twitter or I don't watch the news. I don't do anything. I live in the Highlands of Scotland in the middle of nowhere and I like it that way. So I do think that... I do think that...
the way that I see the whole thing as, did you say cultural, cultural war? Yeah. Okay. Right. This is my, this is my take on the whole thing. Okay. I think that this is fundamentally an attack on truth. The whole thing's an attack on truth. It's not about the plight of gender-confused people or people that are... you know, gender non-conforming. This is about disruption, and it's about an attack on our relationship to truth as a civilization. Because if you say,
that something is not what it appears to be. And lucky I've heard you say that you're confused sometimes. And I think it's because we're being told that something is true that isn't true. And that completely undermines our relationship to truth. I nearly hit the mic again. Completely undermines our relationship to truth. I think, did I, I said that maybe
to Blair White. It's like confusing to be in a room and not know how to place this person. I think that's what I meant at that particular time. Do I address this person as a girl or a boy? Not only in the... because I'm being recorded and I know there are a lot of gender critical people who would be very angry if I call Blair White a she or a her.
But also there are other people who are also gender critical who would say, well, look, she's in the room with you, be as cool as she, or maybe he is. But I also mean just personally, on the subconscious level, I suppose, of sitting in the room with somebody and my mind keeps forgetting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a weird thing. No, I didn't mean to offend you. No, I wasn't offended. I just wanted to remind the viewers of what that might have been. You can call me, nothing will offend you. Call me confused in all manner of ways, I don't mind. Yeah, I mean, that's how I see it. I see it. I see it because truth needs no explanation. Truth needs no defence. It's stable, self-evident.
That's why I came back to the truth of myself as a male, and I could breathe an exhale that had been waiting to be let out for 25 years, well, maybe 55 years of my life. Because I could say, okay, this is me. This is me. This is really me. And when I was living a lie, and it is a lie, you know, I... I was unstable. And that's why we see such a visceral response, I think, because it's an attack on truth. If you don't know what's true, and we're told that
just because something looks like something, it is that thing. Not to call men and women things, but that's what I mean. Just because you look like a man or a woman, it doesn't make you that thing. There's an intrinsic truth to what it means to be male and female. And if you accept that lie, then it makes you more susceptible to say, oh, well, I don't understand that. Oh, you tell me what to think, experts. Do you know what I mean?
I had this conversation. I've got a very good friend of mine. He's an academic. And he's more on that side, the sort of woke side of things than I am. So we butt heads a lot on this discussion, but we love each other anyway. And he... He said something the other day that shocked me because he said, you know, go easy on criticising academia because that's how fascism starts, because it's an attack on truth. And I said, have you looked at academia the last 15 years? Oh my god!
That's ridiculous. That's what we're doing. We're saying, hey, there's no truth. Because academia is, especially in the social, the humanities and all of those, it's just essay after essay about... truth isn't real. Don't worry about that. We'll tell you what truth is, but truth's not real. Yeah, that's exactly my point. You just made my point far better than I did. No, I didn't. Yeah, you did. It did. Exactly. I mean, look at Helen Pluckrose and the work that they did with those. Oh my gosh.
Grievance studies. For those who don't know, they put in these fake papers into academia that were ridiculous and got accepted into loads of different publications, thereby proving that anything goes, really. Yeah, it's all abstract now. Everything's abstract. there is a reality. And to come back to that reality is what's been the most healing thing I've ever done. Because, you know, there is a reality, there is a truth to what we are as men, as women.
And that's not something that can ever be changed. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with saying, okay, you are a trans woman or a trans man. And just to, what's wrong with that? I don't know.
Some people on the gender critical side don't like that. They don't like using the word trans at all because they're saying, oh, no, it's not a thing. I personally think, yeah, it tells me what this person is. This is a person who's either a man who thinks he's a woman or wants to identify as a woman or a woman who wants to identify as a man.
that's a useful word. A lot of people don't like it. I get that as well. Why is it the surgeon, when you were detransitioning, said that they were going to masculinize your chest? Yeah, this was a real scary point for me because... You know, I knew that I didn't want the fakery of having breasts anymore. And over the years, leading up to me, sort of saying to myself, right, I need to get rid of these.
prosthetics and stand up straight and just be who I am. It took a couple of years to convince the NHS to actually do it because surgical detransition wasn't. be a thing that they considered. And I had to go through a more rigorous, more rigorous to get my breasts removed as a man saying I'm a man. It was more rigorous.
the the pushback than anything i'd i'd i'd received going the other way that's not right yeah well they said well you're i was saying i'm a man they were saying well are you a man you see you said you're a woman before and uh
how sure are you now? And I'm like, this is crazy. You can see I'm a man. I sound like a man. I look like a man now. You know I'm a man. You know I'm male. Can't you just let me do this? And they said, no, we need to be, you were sure last time. How do we know you're sure now? and they put me through a really rigorous therapy. It wasn't long, but it was more rigorous in questioning me, and it was the best session I'd ever had actually.
And the woman okayed me for surgery. And then when I went to the hospital, a few months later, I went for the hospital and he was drawing on my chest and the flesh he was going to remove. And he was saying, right, okay, we're going to masculinize your chest. We're going to make you flat. And I was going, okay, well, if there's some breast tissue left, I'll be okay with that. It's fine. Because I still, I'm still like, shit, I want to do this, but I know that I'm going to be...
a feminine looking eunuch with scars on my chest, no genitals. I've still got great legs and a thing that sort of looks like a vagina at the front. And I was thinking, shit, how can I make sense of myself? I still need some kind of tissue, I just don't want the fake breast. And I nearly walked out of the hospital, because he did make me more or less flat. And as soon as I woke up from the surgery, I just thought, this is freedom.
This is liberation. Yeah, felt great. That's good. Well, there you are, you know, as a man now. What would you say, what message would you give out to young people who want to transition now? I say this in the comments sometimes when there's a comment from somebody that's, you know, the young are so sure, they are so sure, because they have access to information.
and they educate themselves with that information and they think that they know things. Whereas real knowledge comes through experience and growth and aging and real knowledge changes you. It's not just information that you log somewhere that supports an opinion, but because they have access to the internet, they think they know things.
That's why I don't really respond to comments from younger people, because there's just no point. Because the less you know, experientially, the more easy it is to be certain. The Dunning-Kruger effect. Oh, I don't know what that means. People who know less are more likely to feel like they know more. Oh, okay. That's interesting. That's a great thing to sum up that feeling. Okay, okay. Yeah, so I just would say...
Life is an exploration, but it's not a surgical exploration. It's an exploration of experience. Do not have any surgery at all. None. And if you're a girl, I just wouldn't even take hormones. I mean, just don't do anything irreversible, ever. Ever. I've got one more question for you, but where can people find your excellent channel? My excellent channel? My excellent channel is called Call Me Sam and it's on YouTube. And there's also a link because I talk a lot about...
trauma and recovery. You know, living with the consequences of abuse and recovery, that's mostly what I talk about. And I make myself available to people that are going through the process of sort of healing. And so my email address is under each video. People will reach out to me and we talk on Zoom. They need support. I'm not a therapist or a counsellor, but I've been through a lot. And sometimes people need to...
to talk to someone that understands the language they use. And that's what I do now. I hope enough people click over to your channel that you'll start removing your email address. No, it's not my personal email address. Well, I guess I had, I was so excited when I started YouTube with my email. and everything. And now I've removed it, I've wiped it from the internet. And still people find ways. They find ways to find it. They do. But it's my choice. And, you know, that's why I...
Because I've been through so much, I've been through so much difficulty. As I move forward, I'm centering my life around helping other people get through living with the consequences of trauma and the healing journey. That's what I'm going to do. Making myself available is part of that. process. Who's a heretic you admire? Oh yeah, I really put some thought into this. And I can only think of people that probably
People who watch this video are never going to have heard of because it's nothing to do with the cultural narratives that we all are exposed to now. Joe Dispenza. Who's that? Joe Dispenza is... I don't even think I could encapsulate what he does. He teaches people how to heal themselves through creative visualization and the body's innate and the mind's innate power to heal ourselves. And can I say one more? Yeah, go on.
I'm going to give Richie Heron a mention because I think he's a force. He's a force as well. He'll love that. Thank you so, so much for listening. Please keep on listening to more episodes of Heretics and share this with everyone you know. If everybody listening to this, if you want this podcast to grow or to keep growing or for more people to understand these things.
And please, please share with just one or two friends that you know and support the podcast by getting my emails, my articles on andrewgoldheretics.com. I'll see you next time.